Postcard from Tucson

It’s Saturday night at Crossroads, a Mexican restaurant in Tucson. The mariachi band is starting their evening. There are four musicians — there’s  trumpet, a violin, a little five string guitar (a vihuela) and guitarron — that big bass guitar.

The guitarron player is a woman with a wide brown face and a body that matches that of the guittaron — she’s the shape of a matryoshka doll, wide wide wide hips covered in a black skirt with that classic mariachi silver decor down the sides. I can’t stop staring at her, she is like something from a Botero painting, like a character invented by a dream, she is utterly unreal.

The band plays a few tunes, Spanish Eyes, La LLorona. The waitress asks my dad if he’s a rabbi — he wears a yarmulke all the time — and he says no, but yes, we’re Jewish. She asks if we speak Hebrew and then, says she’d learned how to say a few things and proceeds to say “How are you?” and, adorable, “I love you” in Hebrew with a heavy Mexican accent.

The band spots my dad and says, “Hey, isn’t this the first night of Hannukah?” “Second,” says my stepmom. And the gitarron player, this massive woman with the massive guitar, she lights right up, her wide face open with a big smile. “I know the dreidl song!” she says, and they sing. “Oh…. dreidl dreidl dreidl… I made it out of clay! Happy Hannukah!”

Later, the Chinese guy who plays the viheula stops by (best cross culture mariachi band ever!) and hands us a business card. It reads “Traditional Mariachi Music for All Occasions.” No kidding.